A second EU vote will not solve this Brexit turmoil
BRITAIN appears to be heading towards a constitutional crisis, perhaps the biggest since the Second World War. As the Prime Minister doggedly pursues her compromise Brexit strategy, a mood of alarm, fractiousness and despondency grips the Conservative Party.
Even if Theresa May manages to pull off a deal with the European Union over the next few weeks, she still faces the daunting task of trying to push it through Parliament.
The scale of her difficulties has been emphasised by a string of setbacks in recent days, led by the dramatic resignation of her formerly loyal transport minister Jo Johnson, a keen Remainer – in contrast to his brother Boris. In a withering attack, Johnson described Downing Street’s deal plan as “a terrible fake” which would leave Britain “out of Europe but run by Europe”.
His departure was soon followed not only by rumours of four more impending ministerial resignations, but also by the announcement that a group of Tory Brexiteers, working in alliance with the Democratic Unionist Party, will vote against any deal that prioritises “the placating of the EU over the establishment of an independent and whole United Kingdom”.
Meanwhile, Shadow Brexit Secretary Sir Keir Starmer warned that the Prime Minister can expect no support from Labour in the Commons for any agreement she negotiates.
IF Mrs May is defeated, then a period of unprecedented turmoil is bound to follow. In this fevered atmosphere, a number of outcomes are possible, including the collapse of the Government, a Tory leadership contest or a general election which could lead to a Jeremy Corbyn premiership – an all too real prospect given that Labour are ahead in the latest opinion poll.
Or there could be a second Brexit referendum, something the Remain campaigners have long advocated. Indeed, on his resignation, Jo Johnson made a passionate plea for another vote as a means of breaking the potential Parliamentary stalemate.
It is a mess. Yet this is a crisis manufactured, not by Brexit, but by the Establishment’s pitiful reluctance to embrace the spirit of the 2016 referendum result.
At the heart of the current turbulence is a spectacular failure of courage and imagination by Britain’s political class. Marinated in the ideology of subservience to Brussels, our rulers, including the senior politicians and civil servants, have never been able to conceive of life outside the EU. Instead of grabbing the opportunities presented by British freedom, they have endlessly sought to dilute Brexit.
That explains why they have refused to carry out any proper contingency planning for a nodeal scenario and why they have made far-reaching concessions to Brussels, as in the acceptance of a £39billion “divorce bill” or in the absurd elevation of the Northern Irish border into a huge strategic obstacle that apparently can only be surmounted by wholesale surrender to the EU’s demands for an indefinite customs union. It is this culture of endless retreat that is now fuelling the rebellion within Conservative ranks.
It is absurd to pretend, as Johnson does, that the political answer lies in holding another vote on EU membership. A second referendum is not any kind
YET if the 2016 verdict were overturned in a second vote, a very un-British coup would have been perpetrated by the elite against the people. Faith in the democratic process would be shattered, along with the credibility of our major parties. The public would have the ultimate proof that any challenge to the ruling orthodoxy is futile.
In his resignation statement, Jo Johnson declared the Government’s handling of Brexit represented “a failure of British statecraft on a scale unseen since the Suez crisis”. The overthrow of the 2016 Leave vote, by far the biggest in British history, would be a far greater national humiliation.
It would be an admission that Britain is incapable of regaining its own independence. Remainers like to say that the present crisis proves Brexit is “undeliverable”, but that is just a defeatist counsel of despair. What this argument implies is that no member state can ever escape the clutches of the EU, that Britain has no right to choose its own destiny.
Such claims subvert every principle of democracy, and are disproved by the experience of all free, sovereign nations outside the EU. Only in the twisted mindset of a Europhile zealot is self-governance deemed an impossibility.
The real answer to the crisis is not another referendum, but more resolution from the Government. The endless pleading and bureaucratic manoeuvring have to end. We are a great nation, with an enormous economic power, a rich heritage and global influence. We do not need a deal from Brussels at any price. Project Fear failed in 2016 and it should not be resurrected a second time to bully us into submission.
The Government must now show the same pride in Britain that the public displayed in the referendum.
‘A Remain win would be an un-British coup’